American water prices up at rates higher than inflation, groceries, and income

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A new report looking at water systems across the United States suggests people are paying more for water now than one decade ago:

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Food & Water Watch, a Washington DC-based non-profit, analyzed 2025 billing data from the 500 largest community water systems in the US, which together serve about 155 million people, or 45% of the country’s population. The analysis compared current rates with data from a similar Food & Water Watch survey conducted in 2015. The study does not include wastewater or storm water charges, which are often billed separately from drinking water service.

In 2025, the average household using 60,000 gallons of water paid $531 for drinking water service, according to the study. However, costs varied widely, with annual bills ranging from $133 at the cheapest system to $1,416 at the most expensive.

Water prices rose 1.6 times faster than overall inflation between 2015 and 2025. Consumer prices increased 39% during that period, compared with a 62% jump in water bills, according to the study. Water costs also rose more than twice as fast as groceries, which increased 30%, and eggs, which rose 28%…

Corporate-owned utilities charged the average household $823 a year, compared with $494 for publicly owned systems – a difference of $329, or 67%. Corporate systems accounted for just 11% of the 500 systems the study analyzed but represented 44% of the 25 most expensive systems. The study added that 70% of the top 10 were owned by for-profit corporations…

Grant of Food & Water Watch said water systems must make updates to repair “ageing water lines and help clean up toxic contamination from lead pipes, Pfas forever chemicals, nitrate pollution from industrial agriculture, the list goes on”. She added: “Corporate control of water systems exacerbates this affordability crisis, as big water monopolies take away local control, prioritize profit and hike water prices even higher.”

Water was pretty cheap in a number of American communities in the past. This report suggests this is changing. This could have consequences:

  1. Will Americans use less water because the price is higher? This argument has been in made for gasoline – there is a point when the price for gallon significantly changes behavior and decisions. Is there a similar point for water?
  2. Will residents protest the higher prices? And if so, what would they protest for? Perhaps push for municipal water systems or regulation of water utilities.
  3. How much money is there to be made in providing water? How many communities would choose to go with corporate-owned utilities because they offer important advantages?
  4. How might this contribute to development and relocations? If water is cheaper in some places and not others, does this help drive changes?

Infrastructure is necessary but can become contentious when it requires changes, like higher costs.

You shouldn’t order more online but the deals are so good so you should

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There are some people in the United States who do not buy into the idea that they should keep buying more and more. What headline might convince them to keep shopping? Here is one option (the headline is from the front page, the headline on the full post linked here is different):

Americans have a whole system going to keep buying things. Hoping to earn enough to have disposable income. Access to cheap goods and services. Financial options that extend buying power (credit cards and more). Large houses to store stuff. The status that comes with owning a lot or having certain items. It is easy to throw stuff away and buy a replacement. And so on. To be American is to live in a consumerist society.

So when there are big sales or deals, who can pass them up? Even if you do not want to spend or acquire, the system rolls on.

It is difficult to resist. To simply make individual choices to opt out requires ongoing choices and strong willpower. We see, hear, and experience endless ads. We see shopping everywhere and spending money is made as frictionless as possible. It would be better to resist consumerism within families and communities that reduce the pressure to consume, that focus on other activities and other goals. A good life does not require high levels of consumerism.

What might happen if large numbers of Americans opt out of these calls to consume? Imagine Prime Day comes and goes without sizable jumps in sales. Or the Thursday after Thanksgiving is an ongoing opportunity to express gratitude and spend time with family. Or if Christmas was a holiday and not a month long exercise in buying. What tactics would be used then to encourage consuming? What might happen to the time we spend together?

Religious construction spending in the US up in recent years

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According to the Census Bureau, spending on religious construction has increased in the last few years after dropping in the 2000s. Here is the graph of monthly spending on religious construction from January 2002 to August 2026:

Two features of this graph stand out to me.

  1. There is a decline in spending from a peak in late 2003 to less construction from roughly mid-2010 to late 2023.
  2. Spending is back up since 2022.

I can guess at a big reason for the decline in construction. Real estate crisis. Uncertainty. Not the time to start large building projects, especially if funded by congregations.

The uptick in construction is more interesting. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, what is driving more religious construction spending? New congregations? Growing religious traditions? A lot of repairs to religious buildings that had been put off since the late 2000s?

Part of the reason I ask is I have seen construction spending figures cited to help show the growth of religious activity in the United States after World War Two. After the war ended and the population started growing amid prosperity, religious construction spending went up. Numerous religious buildings were constructed as religious activity increased.

What story will be told in a decade or two about the spending graph above? What data will it be put alongside to describe and explain religious activity in the United States?

Americans spend $83 billion annually on underground infrastructure issues

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Beneath American communities are mazes of pipes, wires, and fibers. This leads to costly problems:

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According to Common Ground, such incidents cost the US about $83.2 billion per year, roughly as much as we invest in public transit annually nationwide. But the actual financial toll may be even higher, because every time a crew stumbles across a mislabeled power line or a gas pipe everyone else forgot about, it can delay construction for months on end. As Magruder Lyle put it, “if they get out there and they find something that they’re not supposed to, you have to go back and reengineer the whole project.”

This is a large number. But it makes sense when you consider all that is required for daily life in American cities. More and more layers keep getting added below cities to keep activity going. And it gets more and more complicated to address the built environment with all of this set underground.

While the rest of the article goes on to describe a possible solution – accessible underground tunnels or corridors that organize the infrastructure – it is always interesting at what point major infrastructure changes can take place. This raises several questions:

  1. Is the $83 billion figure widely known? If so, how do people respond? If not, would it help prompt action?
  2. If there was a collective will to act and bring organization to the underground maze infrastructure, who could make it happen?
  3. What would it cost in terms of money and time to make underground more accessible and better for the future?

The idea presented in the article is that intervening now to clean up this mess would make it much easier for projects in the future. But the short-term costs could be high; limited roadways, lots of construction, the use of resources. Infrastructure should be considered with a long view in mind but who keeps this long view in mind and will act on it?

Documentary series addresses “tsunami” of church closings that could come in the next decade

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A new four-part series looks at church closings in the United States:

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What Wagner experienced with her shrinking congregation is arguably the most urgent challenge facing churches across America. Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade. Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”

This is the challenge that “Christianity at a Crossroads,” a new TV documentary series, examines. The comprehensive four-part series, which premieres Thursday on PBS stations, features heart-wrenching scenes like the last days of Belding United Methodist Church. It also shows how mass church closures will hurt communities across America — including people who don’t attend church or care nothing for organized religion…

The shadow that hangs over the entire series, though, is the perilous future of the church. Christian leaders have been warning about the decline of American churches for decades. What’s new about the PBS series is that it presents portraits of the people and congregations behind this decline, along with specific numbers and a timeframe for the expected church closings.

As the documentary series shows some shared traits — accessible parking, lively music, powerful preaching and efforts to shower visitors with hospitality — seem mundane. But they are non-negotiable elements for growth. The film also spotlights the Church of the Nativity in suburban Baltimore, Maryland, which has learned another key to expansion: make church fun for young people. It draws about 800 kids and youths for its Sunday services.

A number of people have made such predictions in the last decade or two. The typical American church is small with roughly half having fewer than 70 or so people. Some church buildings are old and are expensive to maintain. An increasing number of Americans claim no religious affiliation. The decline of numerous denominations.

What would be interesting to see in the series (episode 1 is on Youtube) is the discussion of the impacts of closures. What happens to religious communities, both as collectives and the individuals within them? What happens to neighborhoods and communities when churches are no longer using those buildings or providing services? What might the American landscape look like with fewer religious congregations overall and perhaps fewer occupying prominent locations and buildings?

Robert Brenneman and I found in Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures that some closed religious buildings were used by other religious groups. Newer congregations who did not have many resources could find older religious buildings that an older congregation needed to sell. The younger congregation might adapt that older structure to their own needs. My guess is that this will continue to happen, particularly in parts of the United States where populations are growing.

But if a tsunami of church closures comes and the rates of closures significantly increases, this could have cascading effects. Instead of a church or two disappearing, it could be 5 or 10 in a neighborhood or community. Are there enough ways that such buildings or properties could still benefit the community?

No need to use local landmarks while driving

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I have read a number of local and metropolitan histories recently and some of these books include driving or walking tours. The tours guide readers through several hours of driving across suburban communities to see key sites and scenery or along walking paths through a community or neighborhood.

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To direct people on the tour and help them understand the local landscape, the texts rely on local landmarks. See an important civic building or a church or cross a river and then turn. They mark important memories or groups or features of a community. Even someone unfamiliar with the community might get a sense of a landmark’s importance from its prominence or scale or the way people interact with it. There are mileage markers – such as travel 1.3 miles on a particular road – and some wayfaring via finding particular roads and intersections. But the tour is geared around meaningful local places and buildings. The landmarks are an important part of the tour and they help the touring party make it to the next stage. Without such landmarks, what would people on the tour pay attention to and how would they know where to go?

This way of navigating was not confined only to tours. If you needed to get from place to place, you could work with landmarks, signs, and people to get where you needed to go.

This strategy of finding one’s way through a place via landmarks is gone. A good road map with local roads – and not one that primarily relies on major highways and interstates – could replace a step by step tour guide.

But a GPS system really ends it. If the goal is the quickest or most efficient route, that path may or may not pass by local landmarks. Because many important buildings or local places are located along major roadways, you might still see landmarks. But you do not really need to pay attention. A driver can focus on the map screen and the next direction given. It almost does not matter what is going by outside the vehicle windows; it is what is happening on the way to the next step.

Automated driving or touring could free up people to be better observers of the world around them. I am not sure it has worked out that way.

ADDED 10/1/26

Thinking more about this post, I was reminded of a scene from Season 4 of The Office:

GPS: Make a right turn.[Michael starts to turn right]

Dwight Schrute: Wait, wait, no no no, it means “bear right.” Up there.

Michael Scott: No, it said right. It said take a right.

Dwight Schrute: No, no. Look, it means go up to the right — bear right — over the bridge, and hook up with 307.GPS: Make a right turn.

Michael Scott: Maybe it’s a shortcut, Dwight. It said go to the right.[he turns right]Dwight Schrute: It can’t mean that, there’s a lake there!

GPS: Proceed straight.

Michael Scott: I think it knows where it is going.

Dwight Schrute: This is the lake! THIS IS THE LAKE!

Michael Scott: The machine knows! Stop yelling at me! Stop yelling!

Dwight Schrute: NO! IT’S UP THERE! THERE’S NO ROAD HERE![It’s too late. Michael drives right into the lake]

Dwight Schrute: Remain calm, I have trained for this![he unbuckles his seat belt]

Dwight Schrute: Okay. Exit the window! Here we go![Dwight and Michael climb out the windows]

GPS: Make a u-turn, if possible.

You do not need landmarks, like lakes, if the GPS voice is telling you where to go.

Sprawling development and a right to darkness

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American places – and global settings as well – are less dark than in the past:

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Every year, the night sky is becoming 10% brighter. Eighty per cent of people live under light-polluted skies. And while the UN declared a healthy environment – clean air, clean water – to be a human right, I believe we also all have a right to darkness as well…

To preserve the darkness would mean rules and enforcement around the warmth of the lights, where they point, and how bright they can be. It would mean not putting in three lights when one would do. If we recognized that darkness is something we need, we’d become more careful about chasing it away.

Some communities have already done this. Flagstaff, Arizona, was the first city to have outdoor lighting rules, adding them in 1958. In 2001, Flagstaff became the first recognized Dark Sky City. Their rules regulate how much light can be used, what type, and where it can shine.

Other cities and towns in the US and abroad have followed. New York state is now considering a Dark Skies Protection Act, which would add restrictions on outdoor lighting – including some that would affect the city that never sleeps. All it takes to preserve the night near you is the desire to protect it with a new zoning law or, perhaps, a rule for how bright car headlights can be.

It could be helpful to look at why American skies are brighter than in the past. Here are multiple possible reasons:

  1. Concern for safety. As Americans feared crime for decades, lighting was part of the solution.
  2. More development which equals more housing, roads, and spaces to light for human activity.
  3. Different expectations and standards for spaces. How have building codes changed regarding lighting? How do people perceive darkness now compared to the past (see #1 above)?
  4. Less engagement with nature or natural settings. Could be more screens, less walking and more driving, different modes of engagement with nature.

If Americans want darker skies or the right to dark skies, how might they then also address these other issues?

I understand the concern as a street light sits along the residential road in my front yard and the back yard has a bright light shining from an HOA building behind our back yard. With all the direct light plus the metropolitan light, it takes work and travel to find spaces where one can enjoy the dark and the night sky.

But would neighbors, the nearby HOA, and the suburb I live in want to decrease their light use or land use or change their regulations? It would take sustained collective effort to make these suburban skies dark.

What could happen to the housing of the growing number of households of older Americans

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A recent report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies looks at older Americans and household formation:

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On one hand, a large increase in the older adult population can raise demand for housing units. Older adults typically need more housing units per person than younger adults, because they are more likely to live alone or with just one other person (think: empty nesters, widowed spouses).

However, population aging also leads to higher rates of mortality and disability, both of which have a decidedly negative impact on household headship. These negative impacts grow with age, eventually overpowering the positive, and it appears that the baby boom generation has now reached the point where its net influence on household growth is negative. Indeed, Census data show the number of households headed by baby boomers declined by fully 3.5 million between 2015 and 2025…

Going forward, as the number of older adult households surges, household losses are projected to accelerate even further. Our main-series household projections call for the average annual loss of households 55 and over to increase to 1.6 million in 2025–2035 (fully 300,000 more than in 2014–2024) and then to 1.9 million per year from 2035–2045. Meanwhile, the level of new household formations of younger households is projected to decline, which would add to the decreases in net household growth and new housing demand. Under our main projection scenario, net formations of households under 35 will dip to 2.4 million per year in 2025–2035 and then to 2.3 million in 2035–2045…

Rising losses of older households will likely mean that less new construction will be needed to accommodate new households than in years past, but only if the units given up by older households are smoothly returned to the stock, rather than lost to obsolescence or in need of significant rehabilitation. As such, managing the growing number of vacated units will be a concern for both the public and private sectors in the decades ahead, with major implications for neighborhoods and markets, home prices, rents, and housing affordability more broadly.

The projections here suggest more property and housing could be available in the coming decades. Having more housing available would be good news in many places where construction is limited, little land is available, and real estate prices are high.

But the last paragraph cited above notes two significant issues of this possibly available housing: it could be out of date and it will need repairing. Who might have the resources to update the housing or make it livable? Are we talking decades of fixer-uppers that some might see as opportunity or years of bulldozing and rebuilding done on a larger scale or the houses sitting empty and slowly fading away because they are not seen as desirable?

Another potential confounding factor is who might inherit or own the property after the older Americans are no longer there. Will homes need to be sold to pay debts or to benefit from the sale? Will younger family members want to live in such homes? Some houses will go straight to the market but others will stay within families and among relatives.

I have heard adults describe time periods where they remember neighborhoods seeming to suddenly be home to younger households as an older set of homeowners left. There might be a lot more stories like this coming up but how exactly it will play out remains to be seen.

The importance of sleep at college

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It is about that time of the fall semester when this is a good reminder for college students:

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A tired brain makes everything worse. Emotions can rage out of control. Learning, processing and retention of new information are impaired. Focus and problem-solving decline. Then you bomb a quiz or a test and trigger a cycle of test anxiety.

Dorms may be the worst setting for quality sleep. They are loud, bright, hot and smelly, and never mind that you had to add other people in your bedroom. Control what you can. Block out light with a sleep mask; use headband-style headphones and guided meditations to buffer sound; and place a fan near your bed to cool your sleeping space and add white noise. Most importantly, communicate early with your roommate about sleep schedules, expectations and respect for each other’s privacy.

The most common mistake that I see college students making is not staying up too late; it’s having an inconsistent wake-up time. If you have early classes two days, but sleep till noon the other days, you are disrupting your body’s circadian rhythm, which reduces your sleep quality and increases daytime fatigue.

Instead, prioritize getting up at the same time each day, adding in a short early afternoon nap if needed. Obviously, total sleep quantity matters, too. If you choose to study or party till 2 a.m., make sure that you’re able to sleep till 10 a.m.

College students have all sorts of things going on around them. Classes. Social life in the dorms and with friends. All sorts of campus events. Extracurricular activities and work. A phone that keeps trying to get their attention. And their schedules can be pretty open, particularly compared to high school where they attended for a longer set of hours from early morning into the afternoon.

What gets lost in this is a regular sleep schedule. There is always some things that could be done. People to hang out with. Work for class is always there, if not immediately due. Stuff going on. Their class schedule could vary quite a bit across days of the week.

It is easy to stay up late and hard to get up at a regular time. They can survive with this for a while but at some point the lack of sleep catches up to them. Hard to stay awake in class. Drinking lots of energy drinks. Feeling sluggish. Showing up but not really learning much.

It took me several years in college to figure out what I needed each night to function well. This meant going to bed at a reasonable time (by 11:30 or 12), not doing work late into the night (there were steeply diminishing returns on the quality), and getting up at a fairly regular time in the morning (by 7 or 7:30). By my senior year, I took a number of 8 AM courses and felt okay. Yes, I had to miss some late night opportunities but I felt better.

I wonder if there are colleges where the environment or education has led to better sleep across students. What works in really helping students figure out the value of sleep earlier and enjoying the college experience?

“Housing is never just about housing”

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A former leader of the Chicago Housing Authority describes the importance of housing:

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This is the reason I joined the CHA board in 2013 — housing is never just about housing. Where someone lives affects where their children go to school, whether they can get to a job, whether they feel safe walking home, whether a grocery store or pharmacy is nearby and whether their family has an opportunity to build wealth and upgrade where the pin drops for their next generation.

Housing is consequential for life outcomes. Add to the list above: where their tax dollars go, who represents them politically, access to parks and recreational space, what houses of worship are nearby, and who their neighbors are. All these influence both day to day experiences as well as long-term chances.

I think Americans know this. This is why so much time, energy, and money is devoted to real estate and development. But that knowledge and their interest in securing the best housing for themselves does not always translate into considering good housing possibilities for the larger population. Many Americans do not want to live near people or in settings not of their own choosing or out of their control.

The idea of public housing was to provide decent housing for those who could not secure it on the private market. It was always limited by resources and political will. The Chicago Housing Authority has its own story involving residential segregation, high-rise public housing, and not meeting the large needs residents have. It could have done more in a city where more good was and is needed – but it struggled.

This former CHA leader, Matt Brewer, is now running for mayor. What might a Chicago mayor focused on housing be able to accomplish?